Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Warren Zev Harvey is Professor
Emeritus in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem where he has taught since 1977. He studied philosophy at Columbia
University, writing his PhD dissertation under Arthur Hyman. He has written prolifically
on medieval and modern Jewish philosophers, e.g. Maimonides, Crescas, and
Spinoza. Among his publications is Physics
and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (1998). He is an EMET Prize laureate in
the Humanities (2009).

This is his first contribution to
the Seforim Blog.

Arthur
Hyman, 1921-2017

Photo
courtesy of Yeshiva University

Arthur
(Aharon) Hyman was born on April 10, 1921 (2 Nisan 5681), in Schwäbisch
Hall, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, the son of Isaac and Rosa (Weil) Hyman.
In 1935, at the age of 14, three years before Kristallnacht, he immigrated with
his family to the United States. He pursued undergraduate studies at St. John’s
College, Annapolis, which had recently adopted its Great Books curriculum
(B.A., 1944). He did graduate studies at Harvard University, studying there
under the renowned historian of Jewish philosophy, Harry Austryn Wolfson (M.A.,
1947; Ph.D., 1953). He concurrently studied rabbinics at the Jewish Theological
Seminary under the preeminent Talmudist, Saul Lieberman (ordination and M.H.L.,
1955). He taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary (1950-1955), Dropsie
College (1955-1961), and Columbia University (1956-1991). His main academic affiliation,
however, was with Yeshiva University, where he taught from 1961 until last
year, was Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy, and Dean of the
Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies (1992-2008). He also held
visiting positions at Yale University, the University of California at San
Diego, the Catholic University of America, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
and Bar-Ilan University. I had the privilege of studying with him at Columbia
University in the 1960s and early 1970s, and wrote my dissertation under his wise
supervision. Among Hyman’s other doctoral students are David Geffen and Charles
Manekin (at Columbia University), and Basil Herring and Shira Weiss (at Yeshiva
University). Hyman received wide recognition for his scholarly accomplishments.
He was granted honorary doctorates by the Jewish Theological Seminary (1987)
and Hebrew Union College (1994). He served as president of both the Société Internationalepour l'Étude de laPhilosophie Médiévale
(1978-1980) and the American Academy for Jewish Research (1992-1996).
He was married to Ruth Link-Salinger from 1951 until her death in 1998, and
they had three sons: Jeremy Saul, Michael Samuel, and Joseph Isaiah. From 2000
until his death he was married to Batya Kahane. He died in New York City on
February 8, 2017 (12 Shevat 5777).

Hyman
was a scholar’s scholar. He was an outstanding historian of philosophy, thoroughly
at home reading recondite philosophical texts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic,
German, French, or English. He masterfully taught classical, medieval, and
modern philosophy. However, his great love and the main focus of his research
was medieval Jewish philosophy. He is the author of more than fifty scholarly
studies on diverse philosophical subjects. He was the editor, together with
James J. Walsh, of the popular anthology of medieval philosophy, Philosophy in the Middle Ages: The
Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Traditions (1967), a volume that did much to
shape the study of medieval philosophy over the past four decades (a revised
third edition appeared in 2010 with the collaboration of Thomas Williams). He
edited and annotated the medieval Hebrew translation of Averroes’ Arabic
treatise On the Substance of the Orbs
(1986). He founded and edited the scholarly journal Maimonidean Studies (1989-), which became an important venue for interdisciplinary
research on the Great Eagle. His book Eschatological
Themes in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (2002) was his Aquinas Lecture,
delivered at Marquette University. In addition, he wrote pioneering studies on
Averroes, Maimonides, Spinoza, and other philosophers.

Hyman
was staunchly committed to the teaching of Jewish philosophy asphilosophy.
He was not interested in appropriating it as a means to foster Jewish identity
or religiosity. Similarly, he was not enamored of academic approaches that put
too much emphasis on “esotericism” or “the art of writing,” which, in his view,
served to distract one from the hard nitty-gritty work of analyzing the
philosophic arguments. Medieval philosophy, he argued, is an integral part of
the history of philosophy, and Jewish philosophy is an integral part of
medieval philosophy. Thus, medieval Jewish philosophy should be taught in departments
of philosophy. Hyman, in practice, did teach medieval Jewish philosophy in philosophy
departments at Yeshiva University, Columbia University, and elsewhere. He also
believed that modern Jewish philosophy should be taught in philosophy
departments, but was less unequivocal about it. He thought that it is difficult
to discern a “continuous tradition” of modern Jewish philosophy, and elusive to
define the philosophic problems and methods common to it. He often noted that
in most universities modern Jewish philosophy is not taught in philosophy
departments, but in departments of Jewish studies or religion.

Hyman
and Walsh’s Philosophy in the Middle Ages
presents medieval philosophy as a tradition common to Jews, Christians, and
Muslims. Of 769 pages (in the 2nd edition), 114 are devoted to Jewish
philosophers (Saadiah, Ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, Gersonides, and Hasdai
Crescas), 134 pages to Muslims, and the remainder to Christians. As a general
textbook in medieval philosophy that included philosophers from all three
Abrahamic religions, Philosophy in the
Middle Ages was downright revolutionary.

In
his essay “Medieval Jewish Philosophy as Philosophy, as Exegesis, and as
Polemic,” published in 1998 (Miscellanea Mediaevalia 26, pp. 245-256),
Hyman observed that medieval Jewish philosophy was originally of interest to
historians of philosophy only as “a kind of footnote to medieval Christian
philosophy.” This situation, he continued, began to change in the 1930s with
the work of scholars like Julius Guttmann, Leo Strauss, and Harry Austryn
Wolfson, and later Alexander Altmann, Shlomo Pines, and Georges Vajda. Owing to
their pioneering work, he concluded, “Jewish philosophy…has taken its rightful
place as an integral part of the history of Western philosophy” and “[i]n
universities in the United States it is now [in 1998] taught regularly in
courses on medieval philosophy.” Hyman, always modest, did not add that the
anthology he edited with Walsh, Philosophy
in the Middle Ages, was in no small measure responsible for enabling Jewish
and Islamic philosophy to enter the curricula of courses in medieval philosophy
in universities throughout North America. Hyman was mild-mannered and courteous
in his personal relations, but as a scholar he was a revolutionary who helped
redefine the academic field of medieval philosophy.

Writing
on “The Task of Jewish Philosophy” in 1962 (Judaism 11, pp. 199-205),
Hyman bemoaned the alienation in the modern world: “though the means for
communication have increased immensely, communication itself has all but become
impossible.” He argued that the cause of this alienation was the loss of
Reason. Jewish philosophy, he urged, has a role to play in “the rediscovery of
Reason.” He defined its task as “the application of Reason to the
interpretation of our Biblical and Rabbinic traditions.”

More
than three decades later, in a 1994 essay, “What is Jewish Philosophy?” (Jewish
Studies 34, pp. 9-12), Hyman sought to clarify who is a Jewish philosopher.
“One minimal condition for being considered a Jewish philosopher,” he suggested,
“is that a given thinker (a) must have some account of Judaism, be it religious
or secular; and (b) must have some existential commitment to this account.” Given
his requirement of “existential commitment,” he unhesitatingly excluded Spinoza,
Marx, and Freud. A second condition for being considered a Jewish philosopher,
according to him, is simply that a given thinker must be a philosopher; that
is, his or her account of Judaism must be interpreted “by means of philosophic
concepts and arguments rather than in aggadic, mystic, literary, or some other
fashion.”

The
notion of “existential commitment” provides a key that enables Hyman to distinguish
the historian of Jewish philosophy from the Jewish philosopher, that is, the scholar
from the thinker or practitioner. The Jewish philosopher has an existential
commitment to a particular account of Judaism, while the historian of Jewish
philosophy must analyze the various accounts of different Jewish philosophers,
without preferring one account over another. The historian qua historian
remains uncommitted existentially, that is, he or she remains impartial and objective.
“It should be clear,” Hyman concludes, “that for the historian of Jewish
philosophy there is not one, but a variety of Jewish philosophies.”

Although
Hyman excluded Spinoza from the category of Jewish philosophers, he wrote two of
the most important studies on his debt to medieval Jewish philosophy, namely,
his “Spinoza’s Dogmas of Universal Faith in the Light of their Medieval Jewish
Backgrounds” (1963) and his “Spinoza on Possibility and Contingency” (1998). In
these essays, he showed how critical arguments in Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise and Ethics reflected arguments found in the
Jewish and Muslim medieval philosophers, particularly Maimonides. In uncovering
Spinoza’s covert debt to medieval philosophy, Hyman continued the line of research
of his mentor, Wolfson. Hyman’s Spinoza was formatively influenced by
Maimonides and other Jewish philosophers in his ethics, politics, and
metaphysics, but he nonetheless was not a “Jewish philosopher” because he
lacked an existential commitment to some account Judaism, whether religious or
secular. Hyman’s insistence on an existential commitment is crucial. For a
philosopher, according to him, to be considered a Jewish philosopher, it was not sufficient for him or her to be ethnically
or culturally Jewish, or even to be well-educated in Jewish law and lore. An
existential commitment was required.

In
the introduction to the Jewish Philosophy section of Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Hyman gave a simple definition of
medieval Jewish philosophy. “Medieval Jewish philosophy,” he wrote, “may be
described as the explication of Jewish beliefs and practices by means of
philosophical concepts and norms.” It is an explication,
not a defense or apology. One might say that, according to Hyman, Jewish
philosophy is a philosophic explication of a Jew’s existential commitment.

The
medieval Jewish philosopher who stands in the center of Hyman’s research is Maimonides.
He wrote important technical studies on Maimonides’ psychology, epistemology, ethics,
and metaphysics. He always emphasized the difficulties involved in understanding
Maimonides. As he put it felicitously in his 1976 essay, “Interpreting
Maimonides”: “[The] Guide of the Perplexed is a difficult and
enigmatic work which many times perplexed the very reader it was supposed to
guide” (Gesher 5, pp. 46-59). The only way to understand Maimonides, he
insisted, is by carefully analyzing his philosophic arguments, and comparing
them with those of the philosophers who influenced him, e.g., Aristotle, Alfarabi,
Avicenna, and Algazali. In Philosophy in
the Middle Ages, he describes the purpose of the Guide of the Perplexed: “The proper subject of the Guide may…be said to be the
philosophical exegesis of the Law.” Hyman quotes Maimonides’ statement that the
goal of the book is to expound “the science of the Law in its true sense.” In
other words, the purpose of the Guide
is to give a philosophic account of Judaism. “Maimonides,” writes Hyman,
“investigated how the Aristotelian teachings can be related to the beliefs and
practices of Jewish tradition.” He sought, if you will, to explicate
philosophically his existential commitments as a Jew.

Perhaps
Hyman’s most well-known essay on Maimonides is his 1967 exposition of
“Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles” (in A. Altmann, ed., Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, pp. 119-144). Presuming
the unity of Maimonides’ thought, Hyman shows that the famous passage on the
“Thirteen Principles” in his early Commentary
on the Mishnah coheres well with his later discussions in his Book of the Commandments, Mishneh Torah, Guide of the Perplexed, and Letter on Resurrection. He rejects the view
that the Thirteen Principles were intended as a polemic against Christianity
and Islam, and also rejects the view that they were intended only for the
non-philosophic masses. He argues for a “metaphysical” interpretation according
to which the Thirteen Principles are intended to foster true knowledge among all
Israelites, thus making immortality of the soul possible for them all, as it is
written in the Mishnah, “All Israel has a place in the world-to-come” (Sanhedrin 10:1).

A
word should be said here about Hyman’s excellent edition of the Hebrew translation
of On the Substance of the Orbs,
written by Averroes, the great 12th-century Muslim philosopher who
was Maimonides’ fellow Cordovan and elder contemporary. Averroes’ book contains
profound speculative investigations into the nature and matter of the heavens. It
is lost in the original Arabic, but was extremely popular in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance in its Hebrew and Latin translations, and several important
commentaries were written on it by Jewish and Christian philosophers. Hyman
offers a critical annotated edition of the anonymous medieval Hebrew
translation accompanied by his own new English translation. His lucid English translation
is based on the Hebrew translation but also uses the Latin translation. His erudite
and instructive notes clarify the meaning of the text, and discuss the
development of technical philosophic terms from Greek and Arabic to Hebrew and
Latin.

In
his eulogy for his revered teacher, Harry Austryn Wolfson, printed in the Jewish Book Annual 5736 (1975-1976),
Hyman wrote as follows: “[He] showed himself the master of analysis who could
bring to bear the whole range of the history of philosophy on his
investigations. This scholarly erudition was combined with clarity of thought felicity of style, and conciseness of expression.” I think it would not be
amiss if I now conclude my remarks by applying these very same words to Professor
Arthur Hyman, my own revered teacher.